World Cup 2018

The FIFA World Cup™ is the world's biggest single-event sporting competition. The competition brings the national men's teams from the 208 FIFA Member Associations to compete. The matches start with competitions in group stage where teams compete within their groups. The winners of the group competitions then go on to the Bracket Stage, the Round of 16, the Quarter-Finals, the Semi-Finals, the Third Place Play-Off and, at the end, the Final Stage. In the Final Stage, the two teams that moved ahead through all of the other stages vie against each other.

The World Cup competition has been played every four years since 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was canceled due to the Second World War. Through the World Cup, FIFA built relationships, throughout the world through the matches that involve almost every continent and dozens of nations.

Format

The preparation for the World Cup begins with over 200 teams from around the world participating in the elimination matches that will result in a final list of thirty-two teams that will make the World Cup Preliminary Competition. All in all there are close to 1000 matches in this initial qualifying phase with teams from six continents vying to make the Preliminaries.

FIFA uses these matches to generate interest and excitement for the World Cup and for its activities.

Teams for the 2018 World Cup are as follows:

Asian Section

Australia

Iran

Japan Saudi Arabia

South Korea

African Section

Egypt

Morocco

Nigeria

Senegal

Tunesia

North, Central American and Caribbean Section

Costa Rica

Mexico

Panama

South American Section

Argentina

Brazil

Columbia

Peru

Uruguay

In addition to these 31 countries the host country - which in the 2018 World Cup will be Russia - will also have a team in the Cup games.

The World Cup games will take place in Russian stadiums between the dates Jun 14, 2018 - Jul 15, 2018. This is the first World Cup to be held in Europe since the 2006 tournament which took place in Germany. All but one of the stadiums are located in the European section of Russia to keep travel times manageable.

Defending champs German will be playing and Panama and Iceland will be making their first FIFA World Cup appearances. All in all there will be 64 matches over the 4-week period, played in 12 stadiums in 11 cities with the final tournament scheduled to be played at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. The World Cup champions will them go on to play in the 2021 FIFA Confederations Cup.

Qualifiers and Stay-at-Homers

Over the past 3 years 209 FIFA member clubs played qualifying matches in an effort to determine which 64 clubs would make the final World Cup competitions. The first qualifying game was played in March 2015 in Timor.

Twenty of the thirty-two World Cup competitors are returning from previous World Cup games while Egypt, Morocco, Peru and Senegal are coming back after absences of three or more World Cup competitions. Denmark, Iceland and Sweden have qualified for the World Cup, making this the first time that three Nordic countries are attending. This is also the first time that four Arab countries (Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Egypt) have qualified for one meet. Iceland is the smallest country, in terms of population, to attend - this is Iceland's first World Cup.

There were some surprises this round as well. Some of the traditional powerhouses including the Netherlands and Italy from Europe, Chile from South America, New Zealand from the CONCACAF Federation and Cameroon from Africa. The United States was left out for the first time since 1986 while Ghana and the Ivory Coast, who had both participated in the past three World Cup tournaments, were also left out in the cold.

Squads

Now that the teams have been chosen the 32 teams are sectioned into eight groups of four. This is called the "Draw" and the groupings are called "Pots.".

For the 2018 games Pot 1 will contain the hosts Russia plus the top seven teams, Pot 2 is made up of the next best eight teams and so on for Pots 3 and 4. The determination of which teams are placed into which pots is made by FIFA Rankings.

This marks the first time that this ranking is used - in previous draws Pot 1 was based on FIFA Rankings while geographical considerations determined the make-up of the remaining pots. In both systems, teams from the same confederations are not drawn against each other for the group stage. The exception is for the UEFA where there are up to two teams in each group.

Teams

There are 35 players on each team's preliminary squad. That will be whittled down to 23 players (including 3 goalkeepers) in the final list. If a player has a serious injury he can be replaced on the official list up to 24 hours before kickoff.

History

To date, there have been 19 FIFA World Cup tournaments. Brazil has won the World Cup five times. They are the only team that's played in all nineteen tournaments. Italy, which did not qualify for the 2018 World Cup, has won four times, Germany, which won the 2014 tournament, won three times. Uruguay and Argentina have each won twice and France, Spain and England have won once.

The World Cup was inaugurated in 1928 as soccer became increasingly popular around the world. The first World Cup was played between 13 teams in 1930. FIFA was disappointed that soccer would not be included in the 1932 Olympics and decided to create their own competition which has expanded over the years to its present 209 participating teams.

Today the FIFA World Cup is the most widely viewed sporting event in the world, outpacing Olympic events. Close to a billion people watched the final 2014 match with millions of spectators attending the 64 pre-final matches.

The World Cup also attracts billions of dollars in both legal and illegal gambling bets. Sports fans can use Vegas casino no deposit bonus codes to make World Cup bets at Vegas sportsbooks venues.